Rain, you only think you don't shovel it

It is of course the rainy season here in Grenada and that means lots of heavy rain. Some nights I wake up freaking out because it is so loud on the metal roof you think it will come right through; but then I wake up enough to realize I am not in a hurricane it is just the rain and eventually go back to sleep.

I know many Canadians are dealing with another four letter word- snow. And while I think rain and

30 degrees is much preferable to minus any number and snow, we actually have shovelling to do after the rain!

Here the roads are carved out of the narrowest slivers of land. This means that when you are on the left side of the road you are in danger of dropping into the sea, but on the right is the danger of landslides. On our road (Belmont) we had a large tree come loose and slide across the road. While the neighbours were able to cut it up to clear part of the road, it still lies blocking one half of the road. This morning there were rocks and mud littering the roadway up to Palmiste and NEWLO. So people were out with shovels and home made brooms clearing the roads to make them passable.

We have had rain here everyday for about a week and a half. But it isn't the horrid November rains you get in Canada where you are chilled to the bone. The rain here drops the temperature a couple of degrees so you go from 30-33 to 28-31 degrees, really quite pleasant.

Almost everyone carries an umbrella regardless of what it looks like, because the rain poses another conundrum - weather forecasting. If I wanted to know what was happening in Brighton I could go to the weather network and get real time satellite imagery of snow, rain, lightening strikes. Here you get a general statement for the whole Caribbean or the whole island! The island is basically divided east/west and north/south. What is happening in the north is rarely happening in the south and it reminds my of the Newfoundland saying "If you don't like the weather wait 15 minutes and it will change". Plus the weather swirls! In Canada you can usually count on weather moving west to east. No such rules here. It will come from whatever direction it wants and go where ever it wants.

Happily it almost never rains for the whole day. Maybe twice there has been a day where it just keeps raining. Usually it comes and goes and with it are rainbows galore! Today I saw a full rainbow over the Caribbean sea! Most mornings we see them off our front balcony and two days ago there was one over the prison, I wondered if any inmates were admiring it.

The rain also dramatically lifts the sea level in the two lagoons. All the water from the surrounding mountains pours into them and I have seen boats lifted to where they are almost floating into the street. In
fact one tiny boat had to be pulled onto the sidewalk to keep it from ending up there anyway!

So I am looking forward to the end of rainy season where a good nights sleep can be found and I only have to worry about dropping into the ocean and not the mountain falling onto me.